1 Startup Customizations

When you launch a new shell (e.g., whenever you log in, or spawn off a new xterm), the shell starts by executing the commands in a set of files within your home directory. This gives you an opportunity to customize your Unix environment.

Prior to late summer of 2016, new student accounts were set up, by default, to use the command shell tcsh. Since then, new student accounts have been set up with bash as the default shell. To see which one your account is using, run the command

echo $SHELL 

1.1 Customizing bash

When a new bash shell is started by a command that logs the user in, it reads start-up instructions from a file ~/.bash_profile before allowing the user to type.
If a new bash shell is started by an already logged-in user, it reads start-up instructions from ~/.bashrc instead.

Most people put instructions that they alweays want performed in ~/.bashrc, and have their ~/.bash_profile load that after it has done its job. Many people accumulate a large number of “alias” commands, and these are usually kept in a separate file, ~/.bash_aliases. (Note that all of these files start with a ‘.’ in their name, so they are “hidden” from an ordinary ls command unless you give the -a option.)

1.1.1 .bash_profile

A typical .bash_profile:

# include .bashrc if it exists
if [ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ]; then
    . "$HOME/.bashrc"
fi

Actually, all that this does is to run my .bashrc file. So, whether I am logging in for the first time or not, my .bashrc file will be executed.

1.1.2 .bashrc

Here is a simplified version of my .bashrc file:

# ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells.

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

# don't put duplicate lines in the history.
HISTCONTROL=ignoredups:ignorespace

# append to the history file, don't overwrite it
shopt -s histappend

# for setting history length see HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE in bash(1)
HISTSIZE=1000
HISTFILESIZE=2000

# check the window size after each command and, if necessary,
# update the values of LINES and COLUMNS.
shopt -s checkwinsize


# Display the last two directories of my current path in the command prompt.
export PROMPT_DIRTRIM=2
PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '

# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac

# Set my default editor
EDITOR=emacs

# Default permissions when I, create a new directory are 700,
#   when I create a new file, 600
umask 077


# Load alias definitions from ~/.bash_aliases

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

# Add my ~/bin directory to my $PATH
if [ -d ~/bin ] ; then
    PATH=~/bin:"${PATH}"
fi

There’s a lot going on here, but most of it is explained in the comments.

A few things of note:

1.1.3 .bash_aliases

The .bash_aliases file contains a number of personal shortcuts that I have established. Here’s a sample of mine:

alias cp='cp -i'
alias mv='mv -i'

# enable color support of ls & grep
if [ -x /usr/bin/dircolors ]; then
    test -r ~/.dircolors && eval "$(dircolors -b ~/.dircolors)" || eval "$(dircolors -b)"
    alias ls='ls --color=auto'
    alias grep='grep --color=auto'
    alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto'
    alias egrep='egrep --color=auto'
fi

linux() { 
   ssh -f -Y -A $* linux.cs.odu.edu xterm -title "linux" -sl 500 -sb 
}

• The aliases for cp and mv add a -i option to those commands. This option causes the commands to warn me if I am about to overwrite an existing file.

• The alias for ls causes it to use different colors for directories and for executable files than for ordinary files (rather like ls -F).

• The aliases for grep cause it to use colors to highlight the matched portion of each line of output.

• Finally, I have set up linux as a shorthand command to launch a new xterm remotely connected to one of of the CS Dept. Linux servers.

1.2 Customizing tcsh

When a C-shell or TC-shell is started up (e.g., whenever you log in, or spawn off a new xterm), it executes the commands in a file called ~/.cshrc

You may or may not already have a .cshrc file.. You can check by giving the command

   ls -a ~

If you don’t have a .cshrc file, you should make one. If you do, consider changing it as described here. Edit your .cshrc file and insert the following:

   setenv EDITOR emacs
   umask 002
   limit coredumpsize 0
   #
   #   skip remaining setup if not an interactive shell
   #
   if ($?USER == 0 || $?prompt == 0) exit
   set history=40
   set ignoreeof 
   set ellipsis="..."
   set prompt="%m:%c02> "
   alias cp            'cp -i' 
   alias mv            'mv -i' 
   alias rm            'rm -i' 
   alias ls            'ls -F' 
   alias lsc           'ls --color=tty'
   alias ff           'find . -name \!* -print' 

The setenv line indicates that emacs is your editor of choice. Some programs, including many e-mail programs, will use this information to load an editor when you have large amounts of text to enter/alter.

2 Customizing X Application Appearance

When an X application is started, it looks for instructions in a ~/.Xdefaults file. These instructions can be used to control the appearance and, to a lesser degree, the behavior, of most X applications.

Each line in a .Xdefaults file has the form

programName*resourceName: value

The programName is the name of the program to which this directive applies. Examples would be “xterm” or “emacs”. The resourceName is the name of some customizable property of that program. The value is the setting you want for that property. Exactly what resources can be customized and what the allowable values are likely to be will vary considerably from one program to another. You can usually find the list by issuing the man command to read the manual page for that program. Almost all programs will support a geometry resource to indicate how large a window to open and/or where to place it on the screen. Many support foreground and background resources to set text and background colors. Another common resource is font, for designating the main text font.

For example, try putting the following into your own ~/.Xdefaults file (on the Unix system):

!
! My xterm settings: I like a heavy font and always want a scrollbar
!
xterm*faceName: dejavu sans mono:medium:pixelsize=12
xterm*Geometry: 80x36
xterm*foreground:       midnight blue
xterm*background:       white
xterm*scrollBar:        true
!
! A light-text-on-dark background version
dark*faceName: dejavu sans mono:medium:pixelsize=12
dark*Geometry:      60x24
dark*foreground:    grey
dark*background:    black

then launch a new xterm the “normal” way:

and also like this:

You can see the effects of changing the geometry and color resources.

By the way, emacs offers a nice way to see the range of available color names. Running emacs under X, try giving the command M-x list-colors-display. It’s better than the giant-size box of Crayolas!

The nastiest part of customizing X is dealing with fonts. As you can see from the above example, font names tend to be long and complicated. The command xlsfonts will list all the fonts know to your remote Unix client machine. But that list is unlikely to be helpful, partly because it’s so long and partly because the X windows server program running on your local PC may not know how to display most of those fonts. A more helpful program is called xfontsel. You can use it to sample all the available fonts, seeing how the entire character set will look on your machine.

3 Program Customizations

Many programs have their own mechanisms for customizing their appearance and behavior. Typically, these are stored in your home directory, but with file names beginning with “.”, making them invisible to your usual ls command unless you add the -a option. (Try doing a ls -a ~ right now - you might be surprised at how many things are already stored there.) The .login and .cshrc files discussed earlier are simply one example of this more general convention in Unix.

In many cases, these files represent information stored after you worked with a program and/or used menu settings to establish your preferences. For example, once you have used the insight X window interface to the gdb debugger, you will afterwards have a file ~/.gdbtkinit that records the breakpoints you had set in your last debugging session and which of the optional “view” windows were open. Under normal circumstances, you would never alter this file directly.

On the other hand, some of these files are intended for you to edit directly. For example, we have already discussed altering your .cshrc and .Xdefaults files. Another worth mentioning is the file ~/.emacs, which controls the behavior of the emacs editor.